OOM: Cubefallout
This does, he thinks, open a lot more doors than it closes (now that the main door's back, anyway). And who knows, maybe it was so much harder to make up his mind because it hadn't been a fully informed decision, before Coreen mentioned wanting to short-circuit someone.
In any case, he's made up his mind, and there are no take-backs, at least until next year. Even then, Moist doubts that's guaranteed. But he'll have to see when he gets there.
For now, there's the home front to get sorted out.
***
When he gets to his apartment, he finds a roach in the kitchen.
There's no sign that it brought company, and it doesn't flee when Moist comes in, just sort of waves its feelers at him. The sensible thing to do would be to kill it on sight, but he's not feeling terribly rational at the moment; instead, he turns on his laptop, opens the word processor, and leaves it to run while he goes and takes the plastic sheets off his furniture.
After all, he figures, you never know when a roach might be a poet in disguise.
***
He's not entirely looking forward to the part with the Union, but it has to be done sometime. And he kind of figures that if he does it now, there'll be less people around.
Which means he'll have to explain it to the people who hear about it through the grapevine and don't believe it, and/or want to know what the hell Moist plans to do now, but it'll be a good warm-up for that part. Besides, he's feeling up to going out, so he might as well take advantage of that.
When he gets to the Union's headquarters, there are only two people there - the Purple Pimp, tending bar for an empty house, and Bait, leaning on the counter (facing the room at large, of course, the better to put her assets on display) and talking to him about something. What exactly, Moist doesn't have the chance to catch, since she stops abruptly when he comes in.
"...Well," she says. "This is new."
Moist shrugs. "Doc came up with something. It seems to be sticking pretty well, so far."
It's a lie, but it's an entirely plausible one - and part of why he knew he could keep the change, if he wanted. Doc's looked into the excess-moisture problem more than once before, usually aborted by him getting distracted by something else. It's a much more likely story around here than a robot holiday at the end of the universe.
"You're definitely less... shiny than you were, I'll give you that. But what are you going to do about your job?"
"Keep working with Doc. He said he wouldn't mind an extra pair of hands with the ray guns and stuff, now that I won't fry the circuitry on contact."
"I can see that." Bait puts on her most winning smile, and adds, "Want to do lunch sometime?"
"...That depends. Are you just going to send Switch?"
Bait laughs. "I can neither confirm nor deny that feeling. It's just a chance you'd have to take."
"Thanks, but no thanks. I don't feel like gambling with my lunch plans."
They talk for another couple of minutes, and then Moist heads to the back room to see if there are any new bulletins; he figures it's the fastest and most discreet way to find out how much time he might've missed. There's nothing new, and no sign that the board's had its weekly clean-off since the last time he was in.
When he goes home, he double-checks the date on his computer, just to make sure - and it's the same day that he got to Milliways. It's kind of weird, knowing that took up an entire month and he didn't miss anything of consequence here.
There's no poetry waiting on the word processor, which isn't a surprise. Still, Moist feels better for having tried. It's sort of paying it forward to Archy, since that conversation helped him get things figured out.